“Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Striking, visceral, and brutally honest, Rose Keating’s Oddbody is a captivating short story collection that delves into the weirdness of bodies and of existence itself through the voices of social outsiders and outcasts.
In her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame, and womanhood. With ten enchanting short stories, she crafts an emotional masterpiece that challenges us to reflect on the movement and needs of our bodies. Strange yet utterly mesmerizing, Oddbody is a provocative exploration that feels both surprising and sincerely authentic.
In “Oddbody,” a woman finds herself navigating a codependent relationship with a ghost, while “Squirm” portrays a daughter tending to her father as he devours himself from the inside out. “Pineapple” introduces us to a woman who opts to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In “Eggshells,” a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. Each narrative in this collection is immersive, bizarre, and deeply empathetic, shining a light on women who dare to defy societal norms and invite you to question the conventions and milestones that determine success.
“Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Striking, visceral, and brutally honest, Rose Keating’s Oddbody is a captivating short story collection that delves into the weirdness of bodies and of existence itself through the voices of social outsiders and outcasts.
In her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame, and womanhood. With ten enchanting short stories, she crafts an emotional masterpiece that challenges us to reflect on the movement and needs of our bodies. Strange yet utterly mesmerizing, Oddbody is a provocative exploration that feels both surprising and sincerely authentic.
In “Oddbody,” a woman finds herself navigating a codependent relationship with a ghost, while “Squirm” portrays a daughter tending to her father as he devours himself from the inside out. “Pineapple” introduces us to a woman who opts to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In “Eggshells,” a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. Each narrative in this collection is immersive, bizarre, and deeply empathetic, shining a light on women who dare to defy societal norms and invite you to question the conventions and milestones that determine success.
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Overview
“Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Striking, visceral, and brutally honest, Rose Keating’s Oddbody is a captivating short story collection that delves into the weirdness of bodies and of existence itself through the voices of social outsiders and outcasts.
In her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame, and womanhood. With ten enchanting short stories, she crafts an emotional masterpiece that challenges us to reflect on the movement and needs of our bodies. Strange yet utterly mesmerizing, Oddbody is a provocative exploration that feels both surprising and sincerely authentic.
In “Oddbody,” a woman finds herself navigating a codependent relationship with a ghost, while “Squirm” portrays a daughter tending to her father as he devours himself from the inside out. “Pineapple” introduces us to a woman who opts to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In “Eggshells,” a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. Each narrative in this collection is immersive, bizarre, and deeply empathetic, shining a light on women who dare to defy societal norms and invite you to question the conventions and milestones that determine success.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781668061503 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2025 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Oddbody ODDBODY
You like the ghost a lot. You think it’s good company. It’s chatty and charming, and it often makes you laugh. The ghost has excellent taste in French absurdist cinema and enjoys listening to ska from time to time. The ghost is a good listener. The ghost doesn’t mind that you like to gossip. The ghost has a real knack for crossword puzzles. You do wish the ghost would stop encouraging you to kill yourself, but you know that it’s intended in a nice way.
‘It’s not that I want you to die,’ the ghost says, floating its Monopoly piece four places, ‘I just think it’s important for you to try new things.’
You pick up the dice. They are firm and solid in your hand. You don’t want to let them go. ‘I like living,’ you say, dropping the dice onto the board.
‘Why?’
‘It feels good.’
‘What about it feels good?’
‘I don’t know. Sunshine. Chocolate. Sex. They’re good. Having a body feels good.’
‘I don’t know,’ the ghost says. The ghost solidifies, the gaseous silver of its form gathering itself into droplets that hang in a glister in the air. It’s a cloud of rain shaped like a person. It frowns at you. ‘Sounds overrated.’
‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Do you remember being born?’
‘No.’
The ghost picks up the dice. ‘It’s very ugly and painful.’ Its hand is dripping all over the board. You’ll have to buy a new one, again. The ghost shakes its head. ‘You wouldn’t want to remember,’ it says.
Ben pours the wine too quickly, splashing his palm and wrist. He lifts his wrist to your mouth. You laugh because you think he is joking. When he doesn’t move his wrist, you poke your tongue out just a little and glance up to check if this is correct. He smiles in approval. You swipe your tongue across his heart line—the skin is thin here, and you can feel the beat of his slow, heavy pulse.
‘Nice?’ he asks. You nod.
‘Yuck,’ the ghost says.
Ben whips his wrist back, looking around the kitchen. The ghost isn’t visible. It usually isn’t when he visits. ‘Can you make it go away?’ he asks.
‘There’s not much I can really do,’ you say.
‘It makes me uncomfortable. I think it hates me.’
‘Of course it doesn’t hate you.’
‘Yes, I do,’ a voice says from somewhere above. You frown at the ceiling and try to subtly shake your head at it.
The ghost is silent for the rest of the evening. Ben told you he would cook for you. He has brought a bag of ingredients that are incomprehensible in tandem: ham, dried currants, bamboo shoots, bicarbonate of soda, powdered custard, truffle oil, saffron, a single large and softened onion. You watch him cut the onion; it is satisfying to see his long, delicate fingers press the knife through the pulpy heart.
He puts the knife down and kisses you instead. He leads you to the bedroom, and then leads you to the bed. You lean backwards, flicking off the light when he slips off your underwear. He leaves the skirt on, his face hidden under it while he eats you out, his thin mouth rough. You think about how you can’t see his expression and when you come the feeling hits you as hard as grief. He stands after you finish.
‘That was fun,’ he says. He kisses your forehead. You reach for his crotch and he steps away.
‘I’m a little tired,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ you say. Your hands stutter in the air, unsure where they are meant to be. He goes to leave, opening the door. He stops for a second and turns back to you.
‘Doireann, I think you should get help. With the ghost. It’s a bit much,’ he says. He walks out and closes the door before you can reply.
You sit on the bed and stare at the door. Eventually, you figure out how to move your hands again and turn on the lamp. You pluck a tissue out of the box on your nightstand and spread your legs. The cold air is cruel as you wipe between your thighs. The tissue comes away viscous and sodden, slimed over with a thick, gelatinous substance.
‘Sickening,’ the ghost says. The particles of its form surround you, gathering you in grey mist.
‘I know.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘I can’t help it. It’s just what it does.’
‘You could help it. Stop having sex with him.’
‘It feels nice. He’s nice.’
The ghost sucks the tissue from your hand, floating it over your face. This close, you can smell yourself, musty and sour, faintly metallic. The substance has begun to congeal in the cool air.
‘So nice,’ the ghost says.
You wash your hands in the kitchen sink, scrubbing between your fingers with grapefruit dish soap. You look at the onion on the wooden board, smell the pungent stink of its half-chopped heart. The other ingredients are gone; you are unsure if he took them back home, or if he tidied them away. You decide not to check.
You pick up the board and bring it out to the front garden, scraping the sloppy layers out into the compost bin. The ghost watches you from the doorstep, shaking its head. It turns around, walks back inside. You linger in the garden, chopping board in hand. The cold stings your feet, but you don’t really mind.
‘There’re practicalities, though. You never think about the practicalities,’ you say, walking past the cereal aisle towards the tins at the back of the shop. The ghost follows beside you; you can’t see it, but you can feel it, the heaviness in the atmosphere. Occasionally, it tickles your palm and pulls at the ends of your hair.
‘Like what?’ it asks.
‘It would hurt. Wouldn’t it hurt?’
‘I don’t know. Lots of things hurt when you’re alive. It wouldn’t hurt after.’
You pick up a can of tinned spaghetti. The tin is snatched from your hand. It flies back onto the shelf.
‘The sauce will upset your stomach. Everything upsets your stomach. You should go to a doctor. There’s probably something wrong with you,’ the ghost says. ‘Cancer, maybe.’
On the other side of the aisle, you see a young man with his eyes shut tight. His face is pale and covered in a layer of sweat. A ghost stands next to him, holding on to his hand. It’s whispering something in his ear. The man nods and then lets out a low whimper. Water leaks out from the ghost’s mouth and drips down the man’s trousers, puddling on the floor at their feet. The security guard frowns at them. He catches your eye and grimaces, then grins. You grimace back; it is lovely to be a person included in a private joke or look.
You pick the tin back up and hold it as tight as you can. ‘Cop on,’ you whisper to your ghost, hoping the guard is too far to hear.
You go to the till, unloading your shopping. The ghost pretends to help. It levitates the broccoli, followed by the milk and rice, whizzing them around in circles above your head before lowering them back onto the belt. You try to save the eggs, but the ghost sucks each one out of the packet, twirling them in 360 spins so fast that they let out a high-pitched whistle.
The shopkeeper raises her head, looking up at the spinning eggs. She lowers her gaze to you, brows furrowed. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
‘Yeah?’ You pass her the groceries and she scans them through. Her movements are slow and cautious, as if you might drop the items. She glances between the ghost and you while you pack the shopping. The lines of her mouth crinkle when she frowns.
You hand her the money. She takes it, but her hand lingers. Her fingers brush yours.
‘You’d want to watch yourself, love,’ she says quietly.
The eggs above your head stop spinning, and then they shatter. The innards fall on your face and on the shopkeeper’s hands. The money glistens, gold with yolk.
‘Oops,’ the ghost says.
‘I’m so sorry,’ you say. You grab the empty carton of eggs and stuff it into the shopping bag and leave. Egg drips from your face. Your hair is drenched in it; it’s heavy as mucus and splatters when it falls to the floor.
When you get home, the ghost is apologetic. It doesn’t say much, but it makes sad, keening noises. It places blankets around your shoulders, heats up the hot water bottle, floats you cup after cup after cup of milky tea. When you shower, it plucks eggshells out of the roots of your hair, gently untwisting the knots where they hide.
You spend hours of your evenings drafting messages to Ben. You write rough first drafts on paper scraps in biro, then transfer them to a Word document to edit. After editing, you type them into the Notes app on your phone. You retype them again in Ben’s message box, scanning the words for energy, humour, lightness of tone. You delete them before you can press send.
One time you do send him a video of a puppy playing with a turtle. You send another text apologising and say you meant to send it to someone else. He opens the messages and does not reply.
You met Ben for the first time through a dating app, and you thought that meant he wanted to date you. He asked you to go for coffee. You planned to wear minimal makeup and cozy wool, planned to look loveable. You realised this was not possible. You wore the dress that sometimes exposed your nipples, wore the lipstick that cracked if you smiled with teeth.
You smiled with your mouth closed when you spotted Ben inside the café. He was seated by the window, his light hair catching sunbeams. He stood when he spotted you.
‘Wow,’ Ben said. He smiled. ‘I mean, wow.’
You laughed. You opened your mouth to say something, and the ghost spewed out of your throat in a wet gush, splashing all over the floor. It looked up at Ben. ‘She wants you inside her,’ it said.
Ben’s mouth twisted, upper lip curling. He seemed disgusted, and then he seemed intrigued. He scanned you over and suggested that you both go back to your place.
He didn’t ask you to go for coffee again after that.
You and the ghost sunbathe together in the garden. You sprawl on separate sun loungers; the ghost doesn’t really need one, but you think it appreciates the gesture.
The ghost is beautiful today. It is more solid than it’s been in weeks; it has a torso and a head and things that almost look like fingers and toes. The droplets of its body catch the light and refract it; every time it moves, it throws out a rainbow.
‘There’re ways to do it that wouldn’t hurt, probably,’ it says.
You turn the page of your book. ‘I don’t want to talk about this today.’
‘You’re thinking about this all wrong. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.’
You hum. You bring the book to your nose and breathe in. Vanilla, coffee, dust. You heard somewhere that old books smell that way because of chemical rot. You think it smells sweet either way.
‘If I did it, I wouldn’t be able to finish this book. I would like to finish this book.’
‘That’s a bit presumptuous. Maybe you still could. You don’t know.’
‘Can you read, after? Is there a heaven?’
‘Can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’
It taps the side of its nose. ‘Ghost code.’
‘If there was a heaven, why wouldn’t you stay there?’
‘Because I like you, and I want to help you.’
You pick up a strawberry from the side table and pop it in your mouth. It’s tart and ripe and so tender that it falls apart before it reaches your teeth. You stretch your back, letting each bone of your spine crack. The warmth of the sun sinks into your body. You can feel the light settling inside your chest.
‘You don’t know how good it feels to be alive,’ you say. ‘Sometimes it just feels so, so good.’
‘Only sometimes. It’ll hurt again.’
You eat another strawberry. You turn your face to the sun.
‘Something awful must have happened to you,’ you say.
‘Something awful happens to everyone,’ the ghost says.
You put on your sunglasses. You continue reading your book.
The ghost likes the call centre.
‘I think it’s nice. It’s mostly just sitting, isn’t it? Sitting and listening. It’s a lot like being dead, I think. Peaceful,’ it says, whispering into your ear. The ghost hides when you are at work. You can feel it hovering over you, but it makes sure to keep out of sight.
You try to tell yourself that you hate the call centre. You should. It’s degrading. For eight hours a day strangers tell you over and over that you’re a cunt. You apologise for this. You ask them if there is anything else you can do to assist them.
You know you should hate it. But you like it. The repetition puts you in a trance. The words glide over your brain like small bumps on a long train journey, their vibrations lulling you further to sleep. You are somewhere very far away from your body. You wonder if this is how others feel when they meditate.
Across from you, a new girl in glasses is trying to hide the fact that she is crying. You fail to remember her name. She is asking the customer on the phone to explain their problem again, but her voice catches in warped hiccups between words. Her ghost sings loudly and does cartwheels around her desk. Your supervisor Adam watches them, his body very still.
Adam walks over to the girl. He takes the phone from her. He speaks to the customer briefly and hangs up the phone. The room goes quiet when he looks down at the girl, agents pausing calls throughout the office. The ghost continues to sing, the pitch growing higher and higher in the silence.
‘Can you explain yourself?’ Adam asks.
‘I’m so sorry, it’s not usually like this,’ she says. She rubs her eyes so roughly that you worry the lids will tear.
Adam looks at the ghost, and then at the girl. ‘I want you to get your things, and I want you to leave,’ he says.
The girl stops rubbing her eyes. ‘What?’
‘This is a place of business. If you can’t act like a professional, you shouldn’t be here.’
Her ghost sings in a register so high-pitched that agents cover their ears with their hands. You keep yours firmly by your sides.
‘But I’m not the only one with a ghost.’
‘You’re the only one letting it act out. That’s your choice,’ he says. He slaps the air next to him. His hand hits an invisible wall; the spot he hits ripples like a puddle. He purses his lips and grabs at the spot, pulling at it with his nails until the head of a ghost emerges, the roots of its hair caught in Adam’s fist.
The head is shaking back and forth. It looks frightened.
‘You are an adult with agency. You have choices,’ Adam says, and swings his other fist at the head.
You expect the fist to glide through the ghost. When the fist connects, you recoil at the splatting, slobbery sound it makes. Like a corpse hitting a lake from a great and brutal height. The force of it splits the ghost’s lip, raindrops dribbling from the tear.
The girl’s ghost has stopped singing. Its hands cover its mouth.
Adam hits his ghost again, and again, and again. The ghost closes its eyes, taking each hit with a sharp exhale of breath. Sometimes a small whine escapes and it tries to close its mouth. One of its eyes is swollen from the assault. Which is impossible, you think. Because ghosts don’t feel pain.
‘How are you doing that?’ you say.
Adam looks up at you. His own eyes are red and watery, but he smiles warmly. ‘I’m a professional,’ he says.
After the new girl leaves the office, you feel your ghost between your knees under the desk. Your legs shake. ‘Please be good,’ you whisper down to it as quietly as you can. The ghost stays quiet for the rest of your shift.
When you open the door to your car, the ghost leans over and places kisses all over your face. They feel like foamy bubbles. It blows raspberries against your cheek until you laugh. On the ride home, it tells you knock-knock jokes. It plays with the radio dials. It mists smiley faces onto the window and elaborately detailed portraits of the band members of Madness. It’s a nice ghost, really, you think. The nicest ghost in the world. It’s trying its best to be good.
Sometimes the ghost goes away.
You don’t know where. It doesn’t happen often. Every now and again you wake in the early hours of the morning, and it is a shock to discover that the air is not heavy with moisture. It is light, buoyant; you wonder if you’ll float away on it. You find, for the first time in so long, that it is not a struggle to breathe. That your lungs don’t feel sodden. That breathing is natural and easy and wonderful after all.
You place your hands over your eyes. You blink into the dark of your palm. You feel the heat, the gentle tickle of your heartbeat. You are not dead. You are not dead.
The ghost usually comes back while you sleep, but one night you are awake when it returns. It appears at your window, looking in. Behind it are several other ghosts, spinning, dancing, weaving around each other in loops and twirls. Your ghost turns around to say something to them. They look in the window at you and point and grin. It looks like they are laughing at you. Your ghost makes a hushing motion and waves goodbye.
Your ghost floats through the window and over to you, sitting down on the pillow beside you in the dark.
‘Hi,’ it says.
‘Where were you?’
‘Out.’
The air is dense again, becoming moist and humid. ‘Are you bored of me?’ you ask.
The ghost doesn’t say anything.
You think, for a moment, about walking away from the ghost. Walking out into the cold, clean night air that would cut through the thickness in your lungs like bleach through scum.
But you missed this feeling. You missed this weight between your ribs. The tightness of it feels so very much like being held.
‘Please don’t leave me,’ you say.
You lean into the ghost, pressing your face into the mist of its torso until you are inside of it, immersed in its droplets. The ghost doesn’t say anything, but it doesn’t leave you either.
Ben invites you over to his apartment.
He’s never done this before. When you receive the text, you find yourself smiling at your phone. You reread the text every half hour. You smile every half hour.
Ben is a good host. He takes your coat, makes drinks, plays jazz on a low level from a speaker. He sits you down on the couch and asks you about your day and doesn’t acknowledge that you are both just here to have sex. It is very polite of him. You wonder how you got so lucky.
You try to listen to him speak, but you want to snoop. The walls of the apartment are cream, and the floor is a pale wood. There are no photos, no ornaments, no clutter. The couch is white leather, spotless, cool under your fingertips.
He stops talking and leans in to kiss your neck. You spot a novel sticking out of the fold of the couch behind him. ‘Hermann Hesse? Is he good?’ you say.
He hums. He keeps kissing your neck. You don’t stop him. When he leads you to the bedroom, you follow him.
When you reach the bed, you reach out to turn off the lamp on the bedside table. But there is no lamp there, because this isn’t your bedroom. He peels your tights from your legs, tossing them aside. He lifts your foot and kisses it, looking up at you as he does so.
‘Will we turn off the light?’ you say.
He hums again, and moves up your leg, pulling your skirt from you. The air has begun to feel dense, thick; it is like someone pouring concrete down your throat. He unbuttons your blouse.
‘The light,’ you say.
‘Relax,’ he says. He reaches behind to undo the clasp of your bra. You close your eyes. You hold your breath.
You feel a drop of something wet fall onto your forehead, and then you hear something shatter.
Ben swears, jumping off you. He stands up, looking at the ceiling. Mist swirls above, surrounding a shattered light bulb. He looks at you, his face shadowed in the semi-dark. His eyes catch the glow of the streetlights beyond the window.
‘Did you bring your ghost to my flat?’
Your bra is undone, your breasts hanging limp as dead animals. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ you say.
‘Do you not understand how inappropriate this is?’
‘It wasn’t on purpose, it just came.’
‘So? Make it stay at home. Do you not have any control? How can you just let it out in public?’
‘I’m trying, I’m sorry, I’m really trying.’
Ben is silent. You wish you could see his face, but it’s in shadow. You hear the sound of dripping; the mist still hangs above, leaking droplets onto the wood.
‘There are places you can go. For help,’ he says. ‘There are doctors. Exorcists. There are people who can help. With this kind of thing.’
You hold on to your bra, pressing it against your chest. You try to keep yourself from spilling out.
‘It’s not that bad, really. It’s not a bad ghost. I’m fine, really,’ you say.
He stands very still in front of you. ‘I think you should probably leave,’ he says.
He reaches down and picks up your tights, passing them to you. You grip them in one hand, pull on the blouse with the other. He hands you your shoes, and you hold them close to your chest, clutching them as though they mattered.
As you walk out, you keep your eyes lowered to the ground, on the pristine carpet, your bare feet. You try not to look at the mist lingering on the ceiling, buzzing around the light bulb like a broken hive.
When you open your front door, water comes spilling out, running down over the concrete path that leads to the entrance.
You walk in, looking around you. Dark clouds cover the ceiling, but also rise from the floor; the rain drizzles from above but also gurgles below your feet. Some of the clouds float past you, spinning slowly. The rain comes at you in all directions. It is soft, sedated, ever-so-slightly warm; it makes you want to sleep.
You walk to your bedroom. The flooding is deep. It licks at your ankles, your feet sloshing in drowsy steps. You reach the island of your bed and crawl under the blanket, your wet shoes making a damp spot on the sheets.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ a voice says. You turn your head a little.
The ghost has given into diffusion. It floats around the room in scattered chunks. One of its arms drifts through the air, the hand at the end clenching and unclenching. You see its legs bobbing up and down in the corner, kicking into empty space. Ten fingers swirl in frantic spirals, and half of a head hovers next to your own, disappearing into a haze of fog before forming together again.
‘I know.’ You sink deeper into the blanket. The blanket is soaked through, dense with rain. The weight of it binds you to the bed. It crushes your ribs, your larynx; the feeling is calming as a tranquilizer.
‘Is it nice, being a ghost?’ you ask it.
‘It’s beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Soothing. Quiet. Clean. Like the longest lie-in on a day where no one is coming to visit and there is nowhere else to be.’
‘That does sound nice,’ you say. You see that the water levels are rising, almost tipping over the mattress. The room is filled with grey fog, humid and dense.
‘I don’t want to die,’ you say. ‘I genuinely don’t. I just want to nap.’
‘I get that,’ the ghost says. ‘I really do get that.’
The half head of the ghost floats closer, placing itself on the pillow beside you.
‘Let’s take a nap,’ it says.
You nod and close your eyes. You breathe in and let the fog fill your stomach with sleep.
You stay in bed for a day, or possibly many days. The ghost stops the rain but keeps the mist thick and soft. It feels like a firm, heavy hand that holds your throat and squeezes down with controlled care.
Sometimes you hear a phone ringing. Sometimes your stomach aches. Sometimes you need to piss so bad that you think about wetting the bed, and then you do wet the bed. When the phone rings, you wish it were 1995 and that people still owned answering machines.
If you owned an answering machine, you would hear Ben’s voice echoing down the hall, and you would find it in yourself to sit up to hear it better. The voice would be saying things like: Hey, how’s everything with you? Or: You are forgiven. Or: I am thinking of you, and I am always thinking of you. Or: You do not need help. I like that you have a ghost. I like that the ghost is always there. I like that you were damaged enough that you attracted one. I like this flaw; I like that you are broken in a way that calls to my empathy and leaves me tender and aching. I love your inappropriate lack of self-control and selfish disregard of our boundaries as consenting adults. It is refreshing and I admire your heart, which some might call repulsive in its neediness, but I find brave and endearing. Or: I was only kidding! Let me eat you out!
Maybe the voice would be someone who wasn’t Ben, if it were 1995. It could be friends, if you still had those. Or family, if you still talked to them.
The phone rings, and it is easy to close your eyes and sink into its distant, panicked song and let it lull you further into the damp dark of your bedsheets.
A day later, your landlord opens the front door and lets all the water out. He explains that there had been complaints from the neighbours about leakage, and that he tried to call.
‘I’ll send someone over. To fix the damage,’ he says.
You nod, squinting at him in the harsh daylight, and try to remember how to speak. The water in your hair drips down your face, hanging in droplets from your nose and jaw. The ghost floats down next to you, resting its head on your shoulder. He looks at the ghost, and then at the droplets, and his face twitches. He leaves without looking you in the eye.
You take a bath that evening. The ghost asks you to cover the mirrors.
‘It’s for your own good,’ it tells you.
You light candles and place them on the sink. While the water runs, you flick off the light switch. Steam fills the room; you can see the outline of the ghost in the steam, a negative space of a body. Its droplets are something heavier than water today.
You drape the blanket over the mirror, covering it completely. You begin to remove your clothing. You close your eyes as you do so. When you are fully naked, you open them just enough to get into the bath.
When you are fully submerged, you stare up at the ceiling. The ghost is above, looking down at you. Its body cannot contain itself. Its face is stretching across the ceiling, morphing out of shape as it grows wider. Its mouth is the size of a tennis ball, but the hollows of its eyes are stretched across the width of the ceiling; it doesn’t seem to know how to be a body anymore. Droplets pour down from its eyes, a steady downfall.
‘I know,’ you say, and close your eyes again.
‘It’s just so, Christ,’ the ghost says. You hear the downpour of its form on the floor, splatters on the tiles.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘No, no, it’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for it. But God.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s so disgusting. You’re so disgusting.’
You nod. You lower your head under the water. You stay there as long as you can. When you rise, you can see that the ghost has tried to ground itself. It sits on the toilet, its face in proportion to the whisps of what is vaguely the shape of a person.
‘It’s not just that it’s ugly. I think people could think it wasn’t ugly. Ben had sex with it,’ it says.
‘He did, that’s true.’ You begin to wash yourself.
‘But look at it. Look at the wrinkled knuckles. Shedding skin. The twitching eyelid, the browning teeth. Look at the craterous pockmarking of the underbelly. Look at the bulging waves of cellulite rippling across the inner thighs. Look at the hunk of flesh cut from the labia, misshaped, mis-shaven. Why does the spine do that? Why does the left breast hang lower than the right? What’s wrong with you?’
‘I don’t know.’ Your throat is swelling up, and your eyes feel too hot.
‘And this is the best it’s ever going to be. This is the most you can ever hope for because everything will get worse from here. You’re going to get older. You’re going to swell and bloat and your bones are going to wear down and you’re going to hurt all of the time. You’ll lose your hair and your teeth and your sight. You’ll get diabetes or arthritis or cancer. Your brain will begin to stew itself and you won’t be able to remember your address or phone number or name. You’ll be ugly and confused and alone and no one will love you. You’re going to die so slowly. You’re going to be in so much pain.’
‘Yes,’ you say.
‘I don’t want that to happen to you.’
You finish washing yourself.
‘I know,’ you say. ‘I know you don’t.’
You feel the ghost fall down into the bath. The water rises and spills over the sides as it crowds you. It pushes up against you and stretches itself, pushing out long, dark tendrils that writhe like worms as they circle around you. They wrap you tight at first, but slip past your torso, splashing into the water; it’s trying its best to hold you, but it doesn’t quite know how.
‘What are we going to do?’ it asks.
You pull the plug out of the drain. You watch the water twirl away down the hole, escaping into the dark.
‘I don’t know,’ you say. ‘I really don’t know.’